The Interest Graph
Mark Zuckerberg has promoted the idea of the Social Graph for sometime. And it is true that Social Networking has changed the way we use the web. The only problem for me is that sometimes the people in my social life are there not by choice:
Family members
people I work with
Neighbours in my my street
People who drink coffee where I do
People I went to school with
Friends of friends
You get the picture. These people are in my life by geographic default. Whether or not we are interested in the same things is another question. In fact our values and interests may be entirely juxtaposed. This is starting to make me think much more about finding people who are interested in the same things as me. The social space is such a deluge of opinions and data, it is hard to sift through the noise to find what I care about. I am not necessarily interested in people just because they are in my close geographic space. It needs to be much more. We must share an an interest as well - we must intersect on the ‘Interests Graph‘, not just the social or geographic one.
In fact, my circle of acquaintances has never changed as quickly in my entire life as it has in the past 3 years. People are coming and going at a rapid pace. Sure, close friends and family are bonded by forces much deeper than digital technology, but we need another layer added to the social graph to make more meaningful connections.
It’s already happened on a business and career level already – coders, entrepreneurs, advertisers, bloggers, lawyers, artists, photographers etc all have connection potential in existing digital forums. But what about the marathon runners, surfers, cyclists, and basket weavers? (Insert personal passion here) They need to be able to find each other too.
I really feel like this is a massive opportunity space for startup entrepreneurs. Connecting interests, socially and geographically to using temporal mobile devices to create deeper meaning. The question for all of us, is how can we do it in the things we are involved in which don’t yet have a commercial context?
Bigger than the internet – 3D Printing
3D printing is really starting to blow my mind. As far as I can tell it is taking the information we are currently living through and making it physical. It’s the missing link. The start of being able to create everything from nothing – ephemeralization. Converting the first 20 elements into stuff, by organizing information, ones and zeros. About 20 years from now, you’ll remember talk about 3D printing, the same way we remember hearing stuff about a connected world through computers in the mid 1980′s. I think it will be more disruptive and bigger than the internet.
In order to just make sure you are across what is happening here’s the most famous Youtube Clip about 3D printing which is from the Discovery channel. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting a large article about all the implications on the world. And before you watch the clip below here is a list of some things that have already been printed by such machines:
Bicycles, cars, tools with moving parts, furniture, drone aircraft and even balls bearings.
It’s coming and it is going to change everything.
How to perform
It’s easy to think we can start performing like rockstars once we become one. As I’ve mentioned before, the way to become, is to start acting that way beforehand.
I happened upon a Youtube Video of one of my favourite rock bands. Rage Against the Machine. It was their first ever public gig. And Zack was performing as though we was already at Lollapalooza – even though there was about 3 people standing around listening.
Click on the video here and randomly check out any part of the video and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The hint for startups, is not to wait for permission, but to start performing as though we already have it.
They brand you
We are so busy building our brands that we often forget what are brands are supposed to do in the new world. But every now and again we are given a simple reminder on why we give our loyalty to certain companies:
They recognise our brand and self importance. They brand us, and not just themselves. Sometimes they do this via association, and sometimes they do it more directly like the picture above. My coffee custom could go to a lot of places, and call me old fashioned, but I do like it to go somewhere where they make the effort to learn and use my name.
Sometimes the simplest loyalty strategies are the most effective.
Which ones does your startup employ to recognise your early adoptors?
Investing in staff
I was recently speaking with someone about training staff, and the benefits of really investing in our people. To which he replied:
‘What if I train them and they leave?’
I said:
‘What if you don’t, and they stay?’
Value creation & extraction
The web has changed business models so much, it’s hard to know where to start when discussing the implications of revenue streams.
In the past I’ve been very clear on my views about Free – it is not a business model. It’s a sampling campaign, or a related revenue strategy. But in truth, the methods for extracting revenue are being totally reinvented by the web. Given the cost of producing everything from flat screens, the flat pack furniture to microchips is in a state of rapid deflation means we need to reconsider the revenue equation – or more appropriately, the timing of the revenue.
For a business to survive, revenue must be extracted.
But before revenue can be extracted, value must be created.
When creating web based startups it is very hard to create value, until we have large numbers of participants (espoecially if we are not selling physical or virtual goods). The way to get large numbers of participants is the reduce the barriers to usage and entry. And the best way to reduce the barriers to entry, is to reduce the price, or even remove it entirely in the short term.
So when thinking of pricing models we need to forget about the price and start thinking about value. It isn’t until we have created value, that we will be able to extract it. So the real question is not ‘what to charge’, but has value been created yet?
What to reduce
Most advice we receive for startups is about what we should grow, do and build. Here’s one that is the opposite. In fact, two things we should do our best to reduce in a webby world.
Clicks and complexity.
If we can help people use the service while reducing the above in any redesign, then it should takes us closer to a good place.
Trust and my dad
My dad has an interesting viewpoint on the idea of trust. He says that it doesn’t need to be earned with him rather, he gives it out freely and automatically with anyone that he meets. He says that it is implicit in the human make up. He says that trust should be an automatic ‘gift’ in the human operating system.
Occasionally his trust gets abused – that’s the price he is willing to pay for it does happen. The upside of all the trust given far outweighs the few exceptions.
In startups and business, we’ve tried to de-humanize trust and replace it with forms and legal agreements. I really believe that we should trust ourselves and our gut just a little more. But I’m excited that new technology is making us more human again. The fact that digital footprints are largely permanent may even circumvent the need for mistrust and formal agreements. We can instead go back to trusting peoples word and enjoy the speed that organic development gives us versus making lawyers wealthy.
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